Schubart: On “job creators”
The obvious effort to create and embed a popular language coded deftly with terms like “free up the job creators,” “government intrusion,” and “tax and spend,” arrogantly assumes that most Americans live in a perpetual state of fear-induced ignorance.
Schubart: Vermont must invest in working farms and forests
Vermont’s working landscape could well be lost within a generation without a plan for investment and stewardship.
Schubart: Stop shopping, start safeguarding democracy
Has the afterglow of decades of over-consumption brought about a lethargy in which we happily offer up our democratic rights and obligations to those for whom real democracy is an impediment to the further accumulation of wealth?
Schubart: The power of making
We need to look ahead and find our way back to the making of things. In a world of reduced expectations, our children will need to learn to understand, make and repair things as their grandparents did. We’ll need to educate them in the power of making and innovating and creating real economic, artistic and human value.
Schubart: Rural free delivery
The iconic U.S. Postal system is bankrupt. Its valiant history calls up the pony express, postmen and women bearing parcels trudging through knee-deep Christmas snows, country stores with mailboxes on the wall. Could this all be history? Should it be?
Schubart: New grandfather
As a new grandfather, I’ve been thinking a lot about child-rearing, how it has changed and professionalized in a way that leaves many of our young adults pasteurized and ill-prepared for the germ warfare that is life on earth.
Schubart:The fine art of flirting
Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bill Schubart , a regular commentator for Vermont Public Radio and president of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the umbrella organization for VTDigger.org. This piece was first aired on VPR. At a dinner party several years ago, a woman of a certain age introduced herself to me and initiated an [...]
Schubart: The not-so-fine art of crafting a Vermont pond
Frankly, the pond is a joy. Its natural beauty has only been enhanced by our neighbor’s pink flamingoes, though the growing number of personal injury attorneys’ business cards tacked to trees around the pond is becoming an eyesore.
Schubart: Good government is open government
The social contract has two parties and government must become more accountable and accessible to the people who invest in it.
Schubart: Who will own the cloudburst of creative energy?
If the collective creative content of our civilization migrates to cloud libraries and we either pay once to have access in perpetuity or we pay-per-view for our books, music and film, how will the financial interests of anarchic artists prevail against the leviathan commercial interests that will own and control the cloud?
